Partied out!

We threw a 5th a birthday celebration for Kenan this afternoon.  This was the first time he's had a party where he was able to invite friends, and he was so excited all day!!  He invited 10 kids and 7 showed up: Aiden, Axl, Chloe, Daniel, Jacob, Jude, and Owen.  With the exception of Jacob who is a good family friend, the rest of the kids were from Kenan's preschool class. Hannah, Timmy, and Micah were great helpers!  Micah helped by napping the entire time!! Hannah and Timmy played with the kids, helped fetch punch and cake, hand out the hats, help with scavenger hunt, and many other tasks.  The weather was beautiful for the party so we had the entire party outside, with the exception of the all important potty breaks.  Even the cake and ice cream was eaten outside.   There were no clouds in the sky and the temp. was 77.  I have to say the party turned out great for planning it on the fly, and not having an idea for decorations.  I took the wait and see approach as Hannah and I drove to Party City where most everything is way over priced.   I was not very good at planning ahead on this one.  All I knew was that Kenan wanted a dinosaur party.  I had no idea what I'd find for decorations, but once there had a blast picking out stuff, and my head was buzzing with ideas for decorating. Overall an awesomely fun, yet tiring day.  What a success!!

Here is the pin the fossil dinosaur head on the skeleton game.  The kids had a blast with it, and it ended up being a 6 headed dinosaur.  It also provided a great back-drop for pictures with the birthday boy.  
Here is where we hung the pinata.  It had the pull strings so it was much safer than 5 year olds swinging a big stick at it.  Each kid got to pull a string twice before the candy finally came out.  We tried to find a dinosaur themed pinata but ended up getting a bull.  None of the kids noticed so that was good.   
Here is where we set the tables up.  The card table didn't have an umbrella, so to make it more festive looking, we tied balloons to little dinosaurs and used it as a center-piece.  
We didn't have another card table so we used our round table with an umbrella.  We hung dinosaur decorations underneath the umbrella.  We hung green streamers along the fence and used green table cloths to give the impression of a jungle.  We used dinosaur printed napkins, orange plates, blue forks, and purple cups.  Good bags were the pinata candy, dinosaur bookmarks, dinosaur pinball games, dinosaur finger puppets, and little barrels or pterydactls.   The kids used little paper gift bags of green, blue, and red to collect their finds.  We splurged on plastic explorer hats for each kid instead of the cardboard cone hats.  The kids were explorers and went on a scavenger hunt for their prizes.  As far as the activities mentioned above, they came in handy, but mostly the kids wanted to run and play around, which was fine by us.  :-)   Kenan unwrapped the presents, but we didn't open the packages until all his friends left.  We didn't want pieces to get lost, toys to get broken, and feelings getting hurt.  We told each child that we would try to have play dates later this summer so that they could each have a chance to play with Kenan individually.  They were happy with that.                        

                                                     

The cake was from target.  I love the cakes from target!  Something about the frosting makes them delicious!  We also served punch.  That was a big hit!  The punch is really easy to make.  It consists of hawaiian punch, and 7-up.  You pour an equal amount of each into a punch bowl or pitcher and server.  Simple and delicious!                    

Two things I learned:

For any person throwing a party for a bunch of 4-5 year olds, is to make sure you have a whistle.  I did not have one, but I know it would've helped tremendously!!

Plan ahead.  I think the party turned out great, but how much better it would've been had I planned ahead and thought about decorations, loot prizes and other fun stuff.  I'm not complaining by any means, but I wish I would've thought further ahead on this.  That's okay though, as long as the birthday boy and his guests had a great time, nothing else matters!